Counted With the Stars

by Connilyn Cossette

  Listless as well, I put one foot in front of the other by rote. Rushed along by the river of bodies around me, there was little choice.

  At least my sandals survived. The leather straps should have unraveled long ago with the constant friction of walking. Curious . . . Since the night I’d braved the silent streets of Iunu, I had not endured so much as a blister. Tired and sore feet were my constant companions, but they were not raw and bleeding as they should be. Who knew why? But thank the gods . . . Or perhaps . . . thank Yahweh. Walking across blazing sand and rocks without my sandals would be torturous.

  I rubbed my temple. The headaches I had endured from the incense at the Sun Temple were nothing compared to these. Each hour without water the pain throbbed worse. Colors and lights flitted across my sight, sometimes blinding, sometimes just floating like oil on water around the edges of my vision.

  I wore a linen veil over my hair, hoping to deflect some of the searing heat. I pulled it farther down over my eyes, trying to block out the sun that aggravated the ache in my head. Ra must be punishing me for my traitorous escape. He was sucking me as dry as the desert in retribution, and I shriveled under his furious glare.

  My skin was dehydrated and ravaged. I fantasized about Tekurah’s ointments and lotions. What I would not give to be massaging them into my mistress’s limbs, if only to feel the lavish coolness on my hands.

  Two days past the crossing of the sea and not a drop of water in sight. Every pot, every jar, every skin-bag was empty. On the Egyptian side of the sea, streams and waterfalls trickled down from the mountains, but on the Midianite side, only dusty riverbeds and cracked earth could be found.

  Rumors passed back through the multitude that Mosheh was leading us to a source of water, but all I could see was dirt, spindly desert shrubs, and menacing mountains all around.

  Before we had crossed the sea, Zerah’s strong voice often rang out as we walked, commanding the girls to stay close or to keep the goats corralled. But now, silence hung over her like a shroud. Watching her youngest daughters waste away in the overpowering heat of the desert was too much for even the strongest of hearts. She walked ahead of the wagon, her shoulders and head down, veil pulled low.

  Up until yesterday, the cries of infants had mixed with the voices of the millions, but no longer. Every so often a thin wail could be heard, but usually not for long.

  One frantic young mother had come to Zerah while we set up camp yesterday. Her breast milk had dried, and the baby lay listless in her arms. She begged for milk from one of our goats. Zerah sent her away empty-handed. Nothing could be done. The one goat we had left was dry as well, her kid long since traded for food along the way.

  A few lone clouds passed overhead, too high and light to be of any use.

  Although my hair trapped the heat against my head, causing sweat to trickle down the back of my neck, I refused to cut it short. Vain though it may be, the relentless sun would not rob me of my last vestige of beauty. Papyrus-soled sandals, a simple shift, and a headscarf were all I had to clothe myself with. Many of the Hebrews were willing to trade the jewels and fine clothing they’d received from the Egyptians, but I had nothing to offer for them.

  My hair was my only decoration, other than kohl to protect my eyes from the glare of the sun. Even as a slave in Tekurah’s house, I had been clean, my Nile-washed hair shining, my skin supple from the remnants of the oils I used on Tekurah. Here my desiccated and weary body was as wasted as the land about me.

  Shouts echoed through the crowd, indistinguishable at first, but growing clearer as voices volleyed the word back and forth.

  “Water.”

  “Water?”

  “Water!”

  Whistles and cheers shot up, reverberating off the hills around us. A startled child cried out, a welcome sound after two days without infant protests.

  Shoshana lifted her head above the rim of the wagon weakly and moved her lips as if to ask what was happening. Shira smoothed her sister’s dark hair and motioned for her to lie back down.

  The pace of the multitude quickened. Then suddenly, everyone was pushing. Clamoring. Demanding the water those ahead must already be enjoying. The fragile cords holding civility together instantly severed, and tempers flared like flames in a sudden gush of wind. Cheers of exult sharpened into insults as traveling companions forced ahead of one another to rush toward the promise of water.

  The stall ahead of us broke. I grabbed the bridle of the donkey Jumo was riding. This final push toward the water might be dangerous. As soon as the Levite section of the long column of people passed the mouth of the canyon, everyone went wild. A half mile away there was a stretch of low trees. A plant standing higher than my waist had not been seen for three days, and anyone could guess that the trees spread out before us signified water.

  All the organization of the tribes was instantly for naught. Anyone who could began running. Wagons bounced and jerked toward the trees, dust swirling like streaming brown banners behind. Even Zerah gave in, desperate as she was for the little girls to drink. I did not hesitate when she ordered us all to pick up the pace.

  My mother trailed behind. I called to her, “Mother, hurry! We need to get there before the water is gone.”

  Zerah reached out and grabbed her hand. I was leading Jumo’s donkey, and Shira was fighting to keep up with her sisters in the wagon pulled by Eben’s black horse.

  I tripped over a stone and jerked the poor donkey’s head down as I lost my balance. I thought Jumo might slide right down the donkey’s neck, but he held fast to the mane.

  “Let . . . go!” he yelled.

  “No, I have to hold on, or I might lose you.” I gripped the rope tighter.

  “You . . . pull . . . too . . . hard.” His face was a blend of annoyance, frustration, and compassion.

  “Oh.” I dropped the rope, brushing my hand on my shift.

  I had been guiding Jumo’s donkey, or my little donkey, as I thought of him, since we’d left Egypt. Why was Jumo suddenly frustrated with me?

  I did not have time to contemplate my brother’s sudden flare of temper. We were falling behind; the black horse and its passengers sped ahead of us.

  Everyone was running. It didn’t take long to reach the mass of people pushing and shoving toward the stream. But before we reached the water, shouts lifted along its banks.

  “What is this?”

  “We are going to die!”

  “Mosheh!”

  “We can’t drink this!”

  I pushed in behind Shira. “Why can’t we drink the water?”

  She shrugged. “There must be something wrong with it. Look at the trees.”

  There were many palms and acacia lining both sides of the water, but they looked sickly, wilted—still green but certainly not thriving.

  Eventually the word was passed back to us. The water was bitter. Undrinkable.

  “No!” Zerah’s hands covered her face.

  Shoshana and Zayna. How much longer could they last?

  “Could we go farther upstream? Maybe the waters are clearer there?” my mother offered.

  “I don’t know.” Eben’s shoulders hung low, and fear darkened his face for the first time since I had met him. He was helpless to do anything for his sisters. The despondency in his eyes made my stomach ache.

  We waited. There was nothing else to do but wait.

  Would we bury these sweet girls in the desert? Never hear their eager voices again badgering Eben for a song or their mother for the privilege of playing with other children in adjoining camps? After all these days of traveling together, the girls had lost their initial shyness of me, and now they chattered to me as much as Shira ever did, playing with my hair, braiding it, and twisting it into knots—they seemed quite taken with my thick black hair—and arguing over who would sit next to me at the fire. Shoshana and Zayna accepted me readily into their family, as children do, without prejudice or forethought. I had left Sefora and Liat, my brother and sister, back in Egypt, and
now I would lose these precious girls I had grown to love as sisters.

  Jumo brushed his hand down my hair and then pulled me closer. I laid my head against his leg and cried.

  He whispered something. I looked up, having missed the words. To my astonishment, a tiny smile hovered on the corners of his lips. I questioned him with raised brows, and his smile grew more pronounced.

  We heard shouts and the shofarim again. A group of men walked down the length of the stream, telling us all to move back. They ordered that the children and those most needful of water be brought to the stream’s edge but told us that no one should set foot in the stream until the horns blew again.

  We did as we were told. If anything, slaves were used to taking orders. We moved back. Eben and Zerah lifted the girls from the wagon and took them to the water’s edge. Hundreds of children lined the stream, as well as many elderly leaning on the arms of their concerned family members.

  More waiting. What could possibly be happening? Would Mosheh’s magical staff heal the waters like it had wounded the Nile?

  I saw some of the children pointing upstream. I strained my neck and stood on my toes but could see nothing.

  The shofarim blew, and the children plunged into the water, drinking. Drinking!

  My heart sang at the melee and joyful shouting from the children. The water must be clean! Splashing and singing and people cheering echoed all around us.

  After a few minutes, the call sounded again, and Eben, Zerah, and the girls returned—Shoshana and Zayna with brilliance in their eyes. They were still weak—but smiling and sopping wet.

  The rest of us took turns entering the stream, slaking our thirst and filling our goatskin bags, most taking a couple jars full of water back to their family livestock. The shepherds of the large herds migrated downstream to prevent the animals from muddying the now sweet and pure water.

  “What did you see in the stream?” I asked Shoshana when we returned to the wagons. She was sitting up again in the bed, propped against a basket.

  “Sticks.”

  “Sticks?”

  “Yes, there were tree limbs floating down the stream. At first I thought they were snakes, but they didn’t seem alive. I was much happier to see sticks.” She wrinkled her nose.

  How could tree limbs sweeten the water? Maybe it was a special type of wood that Mosheh knew of? Maybe his magical staff was made of this very wood?

  That night, around the campfire, Zerah held both Shoshana and Zayna on either side of her, close to her chest. The sheen of her tears glittered in the firelight. How grateful she must be for their salvation. Yet such uncertainty still lay before us.

  But tonight she held her girls, and my heart sang the same praises that were on Eben’s lips. Shira and Eben sang together, a new song. I was beginning to understand some of the Hebrew language. It surrounded me day and night.

  The song they sang was about the stars and a story told from long ago. I wanted to ask more about the story, but I sensed Shira was still tender from my hurtful words. She did not sit by me anymore like she had on the other side of the sea—so I held my tongue.

  Jumo whispered into Eben’s ear.

  “Look above you,” Eben said.

  We craned our necks to see.

  The fire burned low, and the heavens were clear and full. Millions of twinkling stars peered back through the black fabric of the sky, whispering stories from eons of watching humankind.

  “Elohim, the Creator,” said Eben, “sowed the stars in the sky with his very words. In Egypt we heard the tales of the stars, the stories of Egyptian gods and their movements above. But the true story is much more ancient than the Egypt of old. It is not Nut who makes the stars twinkle in the heavens, but their Creator. Elohim tells a story in star pictures that will resonate through the ages, unrolling like a great scroll overhead, telling us the path of Avraham’s sons. We are walking that path now, and the story will continue long after our journey ends.”

  Shira was not the only gifted storyteller in their family. I held my breath, afraid to miss one word of Eben’s tale. Shira had told me much of Avraham and the promises Yahweh made to him over four hundred years ago. She had told me of the prophecies of Mosheh and how the Hebrews would be led out of Egypt, but she’d neglected to tell me the end of the tale.

  Eben looked around the fire, letting his eyes rest on me a bit, beckoning me further in. “When our first ancestors HaAdam and Chavah lusted in the garden after the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were cursed, along with the serpent that tempted them to sin. Fellowship with Elohim was broken, and man was sent out of the beautiful garden Elohim had planted with his own hands to delight his children. The heart of Elohim was broken, and he desired to heal the rift between himself and his creation, for not only was man cursed, but the entire universe resonated with the evil unleashed there.”

  My understanding of creation was so drastically different—so many gods took credit for building the world and certainly none had done so to bring delight to mankind. I had never heard of a god wanting to have fellowship with men, to cherish them like children. As if he were an adoring father.

  “But Elohim knows the end from the beginning, and he had already arranged a plan to bring us back together. Instead of killing HaAdam and Chavah as they deserved, in an act of pure grace, he made them leave the garden, so they would not live forever and eat of the Tree of Life in their sinful state. He made the first of the sacrifices with his own hand, spilled the first blood to cover their shame and spoke of a Coming One who would defeat HaSatan, the adversary, and his followers. It is this story that is written in the stars, and it is this story that the Egyptians changed and replaced with gods of their own making.”

  He pointed to the eastern horizon. “There is the constellation known to Egypt as the woman Shes-Nu with her desired son in her lap, but in our language she is Bethulah, the virgin waiting for the Promised One. In her right hand she holds the bright star Tsemech, the Branch, for out of Avraham’s sons will come a Branch who will rejoin the people to Elohim. Another star in Bethulah is Bezah, the despised, but in Hebrew we call it Asmeath, or sin offering, for the shedding of blood is necessary, as it was in the Garden. An innocent—a perfect sacrifice must be made to pay the penalty for our sin. It covers our shame, if only for a time, for it must be repeated time and time again.”

  All my life, I had been told that animals must be sacrificed to appease the gods, to please them and coerce them to answer our prayers. But this god called Elohim, or Yahweh as I now knew him, asked for sacrifice not to please himself or to be appeased, but as a gift to his people, to cover their sins.

  Eben’s rich voice filled me with longing and warmed me, even in the cool of the desert evening. I could listen to him tell stories all night. He looked up at the stars as he spoke, pointing to the constellations along the horizon and above our heads. The stars were as familiar to me as my own family members, reared as I was on the stories of the gods and their movements in the heavens, but Eben’s words changed my realities. The tales Egypt had assigned to the stars seemed almost absurd compared to the depth of meaning that Elohim designed when he placed them in the sky.

  “Smat, as the Egyptians call him, or the one who rules—we call him Bo, for he comes to tread underfoot the Adversary with a sickle and spear in his hand. Then there is Tulku, the sacred mound of your creation myth.” He gestured to me and I flinched, strangely resentful that he’d included me as a purveyor of those legends. “Tulku in Hebrew is called Mozahaim, the scales which weigh our deeds and show us wanting. There is a price to be paid now, a ransom to be bought. Each time a sacrifice is given and blood is spilled, it is a reminder that we owe a debt to the Righteous One and that one day, a greater sacrifice will be made.”

  The fire burned out, leaving only glowing embers. Shoshana slept curled against her mother’s shoulder, and Zayna lay cradled in Eben’s arms, long ago lulled to sleep by his soft words.

  I should not be jealous
of a little girl, but I wanted more stories from Eben’s lips about the stars. I ached to lie against his chest and enjoy the resonance of his words against my cheek. After two years of longing for nothing more than freedom, at this moment, I wished more than anything to be locked in Eben’s arms.

  34

  30TH DAY OUT OF EGYPT

  It’s like being followed around for days with wagons full of freshly baked bread at your back and being forbidden from touching it.” Shira released an exasperated groan.

  Even perennially optimistic Shira could not stave off the frustration of consuming hunger. “There are thousands of cows and sheep swirling around us all the time.” She threw down the knife she had been using to scrape the meager flesh off a leg bone.

  Eben and some of the other men had managed to encircle a weakened oryx and bring it down. Once it had been divided among the men involved, all that was left to feed our whole group was a leg.

  It might have been better to have nothing.

  After three days of no food, my empty stomach had stopped complaining. Fatigue and weakness told my mind that my body was hungry, but my stomach did not protest. After tasting the meat, even such a meager portion, the pain of hunger would roar back to life. Once again it would be my constant travel companion.

  Shira took the meat she’d removed from the bone and placed it in a pot of water, already scalding from sitting in the midst of the flames. The broth might help satiate and trick our minds into believing our stomachs were full, at least for an hour or two. I ached for a few vegetables—some leeks or cabbage to add to the thin broth.

  “Perhaps the children might have some luck looking for small reptiles among the rocks,” I said.

  Disgust marred her delicate features. “No! Yahweh does not want us eating reptiles.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ve always been told that it’s forbidden.”

  She sat on the ground and stared into the campfire, arms folded across her knees, her face void of any emotion. Was she dreaming of food like I was?